Long term insomnia associated with incident Prostate cancer

In a new study conducted by Xiaoyan Lv and and team it was shown that having a relatively easy time getting out of bed in the morning and frequently suffering sleeplessness were linked to an increased risk of prostate cancer (PCa). The findings of this study were published in The Prostate Journal.

Prostate cancer is the world's second most frequent malignancy and the sixth greatest cause of cancer-related mortality among males. As a result, more emphasis has been placed on the advantages of modifiable risk behaviors such as lifestyle. The role of sleep in the incidence of PCa is unknown. Using a UK Biobank cohort dataset, this study investigated the impact of sleep characteristics on the occurrence of PCa.

In this prospective cohort research, 213,999 people from the UK Biobank who were free of PCa at the time of recruitment were included. Multiple imputation by chained equations was used to impute missing data. The adjusted hazard ratios and 95 percent confidence intervals for PCa (6747 incident cases) across seven sleep features were calculated using Cox proportional hazards models (sleep duration, insomnia, chronotype, snoring, difficulty to get up in the morning, nap, and daytime sleepiness). In addition, we developed a new healthy sleep quality score based on sleep features to measure the influence of total night and daytime sleep status on PCa development. Unmeasured confounding was assessed using E values.

The key findings of this study were as follow:

1. A total of 6747 incident cases were recorded, including 344 deaths due to PCa.

2. Participants who had a history of sleeplessness were at a greater risk of PCa.

3. Having a relatively easy time getting out of bed in the morning was also connected with PCa.

4. Taking a sleep was usually related with a decreased incidence of PCa.

In conclusion, these findings imply that better sleep patterns may help lower the incidence of prostate cancer, while more study focusing on objective measurements is required to confirm the connections and understand the potential mechanism.

Reference: Lv, X., Li, Y., Li, R., Guan, X., Li, L., Li, J., Si, S., Ji, X., Cao, Y., & Xue, F. (2022). Relationships of sleep traits with prostate cancer risk: A prospective study of 213,999 UK Biobank participants. In The Prostate. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/pros.24345